DOWNTOWN SECURITY ZONE GETS BOOST

MIKE SWIFT; Courant Staff WriterTHE HARTFORD COURANT

Two organizations designed to boost people's security in downtown Hartford are now operating from new, more visible, headquarters.

The Hartford Guides, downtown's ambassador and escort service, have relocated to the police department's service offices at 101 Pearl St. One block north, Shawmut Bank's new downtown security headquarters at the former site of Huntington's Bookstore on Asylum Street became fully operational last week.

"The guides and the police have always had a symbiotic relationship," said Austin Jordan, administrator of the Hartford Guides. "This co-location helps to enhance that relationship."

Both the police and the guides get something out of sharing space in the Pearl Street office. Having the guides there means the office is always staffed, so the police museum in the office is now regularly open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

For the guides, sharing space with the police means individual guides get to know better the officers who patrol downtown. Although Jordan said the guides' old office in CityPlace was a good one, having an office at street level is an advantage.

The city-owned location, a former bank, has space for training. Individual guides have their own work stations at the former tellers' counter, where they distribute information instead of cash.

On Pearl Street, the Shawmut Bank security center will be the base for 62 security guards who patrol bank offices on Main Street and elsewhere downtown, said Frank Rudewicz, director of corporate security for Shawmut.

Many of those patrols are walking beats, part of a "corporate block watch" program intended to keep uniformed personnel on the streets and to make people feel safer. The Shawmut security offices will be staffed 24 hours a day. They are meant to be a hub of activity in a downtown where many people feel unsafe because the streets are so empty outside business hours.

Jordan said police statistics show that crime in the downtown area is down 23 percent during the first seven months of 1994, compared to the same period last year. He said there's also a need to make people feel safer.